The American Council of Exercise outlines seven diverse forms of strength training, each catering to distinct functional applications. While each type enhances physical fitness, athletic abilities, or overall well-being, their stark differences explain why a track runner and a bodybuilder, both labeled "strong" and "fit," frequently exhibit contrasting appearances and training routines. What is Strength Training? Strength training, also called weight or resistance training, involves doing exercises to get stronger and last longer. It's not just about lifting weights; you can use your body weight or try different exercises like isometrics and plyometrics. The goal is to make your muscles stronger over time.  Strength training is mainly a type of exercise that doesn't require a lot of air, but some forms like circuit training also get your heart pumping. It helps make your muscles, tendons, and bones stronger, boosts metabolism, and reduces the chance of getting hurt. Athletes and older people can benefit from it to improve their joints, hearts, and lower their injury risk. Many sports and activities include strength training in their practice to make people better at what they do. Read more: How Does Physical Activity and Exercise Affect Testosterone Levels? Benefits and Risks of Different Types of Strength Training  Agile Strength Training Agile Strength Training is a fitness approach that blends traditional strength exercises with practical movements for daily activities. It emphasizes adaptability and flexibility, incorporating dynamic workouts like weightlifting, bodyweight exercises, and flexibility drills. The primary goal is to enhance overall strength, flexibility, and agility, adapting to individual needs and progress. Benefits of Agile Strength Training This approach improves overall strength, flexibility, and the ability to move with precision in different directions. It's valuable for daily tasks, promoting quick and controlled responses to your surroundings, ultimately aiding injury prevention. Read more: Why You Should Try Walking Backwards

Testosterone, a crucial hormone for both men and women, plays a vital role in various bodily functions. One factor that significantly influences testosterone levels is exercise and mental well-being. So, it is natural to wonder how these two interact. Let's explore the intricate relationship between exercise and testosterone to understand how physical activity impacts hormonal balance.  What is Testosterone? Testosterone, a pivotal hormone, is present in both men and women, although commonly associated with male characteristics. Produced in the testicles in men, ovaries in women, and to a lesser extent, the adrenal glands, it plays a crucial role in diverse bodily functions.  This hormone is instrumental in the development of male reproductive tissues, including the testes and prostate. Often referred to as the "male sex hormone," testosterone acts as a conductor orchestrating various bodily functions, impacting muscle growth, bone density, mood, libido, and more.  Read more: 10 Hazards at the Gym and How to Avoid Them In women, testosterone is essential for maintaining reproductive health and influencing aspects of mood and energy.  The decrease of testosterone hormone with age is natural, but factors like stress and lifestyle can accelerate this process. Understanding how to optimise testosterone, perhaps through targeted physical exercises, can help promote overall health and well-being.  How Exercise Affects Testosterone Relationship between Exercise and Testosterone The correlation between exercise and testosterone levels in men has been well-established by different research initiatives. Long-term engagement in physical activity has shown a consistent increase in testosterone levels.  Interestingly, certain physical exercises can induce a temporary spike of testosterone hormone within fifteen minutes to an hour after completion of the workout. Such short term impacts are especially noticeable in younger men. This immediate boost is more pronounced when workouts are performed in the morning, aligning with the natural peak of testosterone levels during that time. Read more: Zumba: Dance Your Way into Fitness However, sustaining elevated testosterone levels over the long term requires regular exercise. While there is currently no conclusive evidence of increased testosterone levels in women due to exercise, the presence of testosterone during workouts aids in training and muscle recovery.  Research reveals nuanced findings show that men experience significant testosterone increases post-weightlifting, whereas women show minimal changes. Resistance training in women has a temporary testosterone boost impacting fat distribution. For older men, regular physical activity not only raises testosterone levels but also enhances growth hormone levels and positively affects brain function. In those previously inactive, exercise led to a notable increase in dihydrotestosterone (DHT).  Read more: 10 Great Health, Fitness Career Ideas You May Consider Interestingly, even in men with obesity, regular exercise proved more effective in boosting testosterone levels than weight loss diets alone. Maintaining healthy or heightened testosterone levels is crucial, not just for muscle building but for overall well-being and exercise progress. Exercises that Increase Testosterone Not all exercises can create the same impacts when it comes to elevating testosterone levels. Understanding the most effective workouts can contribute significantly  to achieving the desired hormonal balance. Here is a closer look at some of the best exercises known to increase testosterone.

From team sports to martial arts, almost every form of exercise requires some level of physical endurance and stamina. Learning techniques in games like tennis and football for example, certainly holds a lot of value, but is eventually moot if one does not have the fundamental stamina to last an entire session of said sports. Here are some tips to get marathon levels of stamina and endurance and why it’s so important. Why Are Stamina and Endurance So Important? A comparison can be drawn to music to explain the necessity of both stamina and endurance. If one does not know how to read music or know what notes are, it is certainly not possible to even move to more advanced lessons. Stamina and endurance are the same: without both, you won’t be meeting the basic standard in the activity you are practicing. Read How to choose the best shoes for running Running out of breath after the first dance routine in an hour long class or being burnt out on the third round of an 11 point game in badminton are examples of how the basic tasks your sport sets for you can’t even be met. Naturally, not everyone can attain the peak level of human performance in sports or fitness, but some level of performance is required in order to fully participate in the fitness activity of your choice. Thankfully neither are purely genetic and can be trained with enough motivation and discipline. The deed of getting better endurance stems from the openness to break barriers. Constantly setting goals with time and pacing of your regime and surpassing previous goals is the definition of training and is the essence of building both these attributes up. Read Running vs. Swimming vs. Cycling: Which Is Best for Burning Fat? The Partnership of Stamina & Endurance When thinking about said goals, stamina and endurance have a large part about how you establish your goals in the first place. While stamina focuses on muscle groups and its ability to perform at the height of its capacity, endurance is defined by time and how long the specific muscle group can perform optimally. Dr. Sullivan from Nova Chiropractic and Wellness Center gives the comparison between doing a push up versus running laps. Failing at the former is the result of poor stamina as the targeted muscle group is not capable of executing the task, while running out of breath after a certain number of laps is where endurance starts to dip. Read Off Road Vs Road Cycling: Know the Difference While both have technical differences, stamina is linked to performing at an optimal level, while endurance is about performing a task as long as possible - both are equally important and go hand in hand with each other for any physical activity. On a more cardiovascular front, endurance will be tested, but muscular durability will be where your stamina will be relevant. Training Stamina As it is muscle related, Strength Training is possibly one of the most direct ways to train your muscles to better endure any form of exercise. While it may appear to mirror the types of exercises done in bodybuilding, working on back, shoulders, legs, arms and core are all critical for a well-rounded improvement in stamina. Read How Effective Are Machines At The Gym? Exercises like barbell walks, lunges, shoulder raises and even deadlifts are good exercises to train specific muscle groups, but that doesn’t mean that you need to go heavy. Seeing as aesthetics are not the goal, light weights that allow you to only tire after 20 repetitions are ideal to train your muscles to be under tension for a set amount of time. Alternatively, you can approach the weights HIITS style and time your weight-based activities to a minute and rotate between a variety of exercises. Dumbbell squats, kettlebell swings and even planks are all effective ways to either isolate or work on multiple muscle groups. Read Which Swimming Style Is Best For Fat Loss? When first starting, there could be feelings of discomfort from the sheer amount of pressure your muscles are going through. The shock will wear off after consistent practice and enough patience. You will start seeing results when your legs or back stop aching as you continue with your sport. Running, throwing, jumping and more will be seamless as you progress further into your strength training. Training Endurance Not everyone is a fan of cardio; thankfully running a marathon isn’t quite your goal either, which means starting with brisk walking, jogging and static cycling are viable options. The goal is to expand your cardiovascular system and condition your lungs in order to ensure that you don’t run out of breath after a certain amount of time. Read Benefits of Leg Workouts: Why You Should Never Skip Leg Day Tempo runs are a great way to get started if jogging and brisk walking are too slow paced for you. Running certain short distances in bursts, and reducing the pace for double the time is a classic HIIT move that has proven to work wonderfully in countless fitness surveys. On a practical standpoint, it can be identical to playing team sports, where the tempo of sprinting and brisk jogging are often alternated. Unfortunately, cycling and swimming are the only other options that yield the most effective training. Both will require some time and a basic understanding of technique in order to properly train the muscles. Read Effectiveness of Compound Exercises for Muscle Definition However swimming is more for the whole body and is a popular pick for those looking to elevate their heart rate for a gradual amount of time without pouring out tons of sweat or worrying about travelling. There is no way to escape cardio if you want to continuously improve your endurance, but setting the time alone to try and better yourself far surpasses not trying at all.

When one dares to put on muscles, the usual remarks have thrown his or her way usually goes like this; “Be careful about putting on muscle, when you’re old they will start to sag”. If you’ve ever been on the receiving end of this or have even dished out a comment along those lines as well, it’s time to pay no attention to it. Muscle building is a process that is specifically engineered by people to go beyond the normal limits of muscle growth. This is done by deliberately stretching and tearing muscle fibers so that they can recover bigger. When people become older, it commonly alludes that muscle-building will start to become an uphill battle. Is there truth to this and is there an actual limit to put on muscle? What Is Considered “Too Old”? When comments about becoming too old to put on muscle - many don’t exactly specify an age group, but it is commonly implied that people above the age of 40 tend to face a tougher time preserving muscles. While many consider this to be a natural progression through aging, factors like family responsibilities, career, and a decrease in energy or motivation are often overlooked. The University of Oklahoma did a muscle-building test between adults between 35 to 50 and those who were between 18 to 22 to see which age group was likely to build more muscle under the exact same training regime. Surprisingly, the muscle growth (measured by weight and strength) was almost identical, which does a lot to debunk the theory of age sabotaging muscle growth. Read: Kick-start your day with a healthy breakfast On the contrary, surveys from Cleveland Clinic have shown that between 40 percent to 45 percent of males have a much lower testosterone count. This is a huge leap from the previous study - proving that the slightest alterations to the body’s testosterone levels can affect one’s performance drastically. It has also been stated that the ideal age to start bodybuilding seriously is between the ages of 20 to 30 years old, so where does the truth lie? As for many cases out there, the truth is always somewhere in the middle. Yes, it is true that the body loses more testosterone when it enters its 30s, but not because you’ve officially crossed the milestone of actually hitting that age. As mentioned, usually testosterone starts to deplete once one goes through muscle loss and unhealthy weight gain all at once. Therefore, it has often been interpreted that getting into bodybuilding is impossible in your 40s, where in reality, it was because the body has not been training throughout the years. Read: How Effective Are Machines At The Gym? How Can An Older Person Build Muscle? It’s actually not too different from the standard way of building muscles. If not genetic, classic “old person” symptoms such as joint pains, weakened muscles, and aches are all accredited to inactivity over an extended amount of time, rather than the fact one has hit a certain milestone. Dieting By far, the most important attribute to keep the pursuit of muscle building or toning alive; dieting literally makes and breaks the results of your training and how your body will progress in the foreseeable future. Knowing how to moderate your macros like sugar, protein, and carbohydrates will fuel your body for the other 22 to 23 hours in the day that you’re not working out. Some foods that are rich in fats like Omega-3 also help maintain high levels of testosterone, especially when you choose to take a back seat from muscle building and are moving on to toning. Understanding your calorie intake will ensure that your muscles will grow instead of your belly. Read: Effectiveness of Compound Exercises for Muscle Definition Getting Your Metabolism Running While it is true that the body’s metabolic rate starts to slowly dwindle when one approaches his or her 30s, that doesn’t mean that your body is completely not eligible to work out. In 2017 the Canadian Journal of Physiology and Pharmacology indicated that a batch of caffeine can kick start metabolism for healthy adult males. This would trigger ketogenesis and can change one’s metabolic rate overnight. Aside from this, regular consumption of fiber and a semi-regular cardio routine can do wonders to ensure that you will burn the maximum amount of fat as you take the steps to build muscle. Training Smart While your motivation to train may have dwindled in the past few years, committing a single year will grant results that are akin to the years in your youth if you do so properly. With joint pains and a slowed metabolism approaching as you age, being smart about the amount of weight used for a bulking session must be carefully reviewed by either you or a professional. Practicing safe techniques and ensuring that everybody part is worked to the best of their abilities is crucial. Half-baked forms and weights that are not challenging will only hamper your own ability to succeed. Read: Best Health Clubs and Gyms in Dhaka in 2021 Knowing How To Rest If you are above 30, it is far from being “too late” to build muscles and even go for competition, but this kind of eagerness can often result in overtraining. Overtraining isn’t as clear-cut as simply going to the gym every day. There are times when committing to an extra half an hour doing exercises that cover the same exact muscles as your previous exercise puts your body under an unnecessary strain. Your muscles should be worked into exhaustion, and focusing on an already exhausted muscle group will not change how much mass is grown during your rest phase. Additionally, resting is the time when your body can take the nutrients your food has provided and use those as fuel to enable your body to recover faster. Progress comes from picking your battles, and sometimes, you’ve won by simply taking the day off after an intense workout. Read Muscle Building Diet: Best Foods for Muscle Gains, Definition and Fat Reduction

The fitness industry isn’t shy when it comes to advocating the importance of dieting when trying to keep fit. Though workouts are great, it only occupies a couple of hours of your time, versus the rest of the day when food is the prevalent influence. Getting “cut” for the summer body has always been the dream goal for many and that usually requires an intensive diet that may make exercising look like the easiest part of reaching that goal. So, here are the top foods for muscle definition. What Kind Of Diet Should You Be Looking For? Logically, being defined means that your muscles have to be completely visible. Veins, sculpt and even muscle fibers all contribute to the definition of getting shredded - this would be impossible if one’s fact content is beyond a certain mark. Therefore, going on a calorie deficit kind of diet makes the most sense as the goal is to reduce body fat while supplying your muscles with a good amount of protein for some bulk. The exercises to be done will ultimately require weights and bulking will happen, especially to untrained muscle groups, but with high repetitions and a shorter rest time between sets, the definition will be the main result to look forward to. Read Apple Cider Vinegar: Benefits and Risk of Regular Consumption Top Foods for your Muscle Building Diet Kale Vegetables aren’t exactly the tastiest things on the planet, but they are great for fat loss and contain tons of nutrients. Fiber is naturally prevalent in fruits and vegetables, which does boost the body’s metabolism significantly, but Kale stands out for its iron. This nutrient is key to muscle development and helps the body circulate oxygen into your body, effectively part of the process of muscle synthesis. Joints also benefit from Kale because of its richness in Vitamin K. If you are susceptible to joint pains, this will safeguard your bones to ensure that they can keep up with your training. Although there are other neat options on this list, kale is almost mandatory due to how much its nutritional value aligns with muscle definition. Read TRX vs. Other Gym Equipments: A Detailed Comparison Millet This ingredient isn’t exactly the talk of the town in the world of fitness, but it certainly is a viable option as you plan your meals before and after training. Essentially, millet is birdseed. It works great for people and rivals the likes of quinoa because of its ability to help the blood flow with magnesium that contributes to definition. Additionally, millet contains plant-based protein which is perfect for complementing meat ingredients that also contains protein. It may not be the most obvious choice around, but it certainly holds value for your regime. The ingredient works best in breakfast bowls, salads, quinoa and even bread. Read What is Protein Powder? Benefits of Taking Protein Supplements Hemp Seeds It may come from cannabis, but its properties are 100% legal as it does not give you any sort of high. Not the easiest ingredients to find in the South Asian region, but it is rich in amino acids which are one of the most sought after nutrients, - hence pre workouts. In essence, amino acids are energy suppliers that are good for muscle definition and stamina. It contains gamma-linolenic acid (GLC) and Omega-6 fatty acids which are key to fat burning. The ingredient also does wonders against inflammation and boosts the health of your skin, nails and hair too. It is an overall great product, but it should not be consumed in excess. It works best with blends that contain hemp powder or salads. Read Types of Meditation: Which One is Right for You Quinoa There is a reason why quinoa sets a benchmark for other superfoods to follow or even surpass. Ever since the fitness industry has influenced many to start living healthier, quinoa has been a hot topic in conversation. It is a complex carbohydrate that has a substantial amount of protein and amino acids. The former is crucial for all diets involving muscle building, however, its amino acid is a nice addition that boosts the body when it repairs muscles. The benefit from this dish shines the most during the muscle repairing phase - therefore a calorie deficit should not necessarily lead to a protein surplus. Quinoa works the best after your workout and it is difficult to get the most out of it during your resting time. It is usually taken as the prime carbohydrate of choice, or else it can complement a salad. Read Cycling Benefits: How Indoor and Outdoor Cycling Strengthens Your Immune System Cottage Cheese The first dairy ingredient on the list, cottage cheese is a neat addition to the meal, especially if you choose to stay off carbohydrates due to how rich it can be. The strength of this cheese is its containment of Casein, which is currently one of the most viable protein sources in the supplement market. Casein helps your blood’s natural amino acids get a boost and lets that elevation stay a while longer. It slows digestion down, which means your body takes a longer time to digest it. This does wonder for more intensive training or regimes that are longer in duration. Interestingly enough, cottage cheese is versatile enough to be paired with fruits and pancakes. Read Bodybuilding Vs Powerlifting: Similarities, Differences, Pros, Cons Spinach Spinach is a classic and can be an alternative to Kale if that is your preferred choice. It is the foundation for many versions of the salad dish worldwide and for good reason. It contains a high amount of iron when boiled and magnesium which allows the body to metabolise carbohydrates better. Studies have shown that spinach has also helped to boost testosterone levels which translate over to muscle strength. It may be a bit of a stretch to declare spinach as an all-encompassing ingredient for muscle definition, but it is one of the few ingredients on the list that can be eaten multiple times during the day. Naturally, spinach is best when in a salad, but can work as a side for meat and quinoa too. Lentils Lentils are hassle-free add ons that work wonders for muscle building. They may not get the most love in the fitness community, but they pack a whopping 18 grams of protein minimum per cup. An average serving of protein powder contains between 20-25grams of protein, which makes this natural ingredient a powerhouse when it comes to protein. Other benefits of lentils include their low cost and decently long shelf life. It goes well with rice and salad. Read Different forms of Vitamin D: Benefits, sources of Vitamin D1 vs D2 vs D3